A Failed Nation - Rogue Island
In September 1786, a Newport butcher named John Weeden refused to take paper money for a joint of meat, and demanded silver. Under Rhode Island law, that was a crime — punishable by a fine, the loss o...
20 Aug 30min
A Failed Nation - Pennies on the Dollar
In 1786 the Congress of the United States asked the thirteen states for 3.8 million dollars to pay the debts of the Revolution. It collected 663 dollars. This is the story of the broken money machine ...
18 Aug 29min
A Failed Nation - The Financier
He was the richest man in America, and for most of the Revolution he was also its treasury. When the United States had no money and no credit, it borrowed on the name of Robert Morris — a Philadelphia...
13 Aug 30min
A Failed Nation - A Dangerous Instrument
In the spring of 1783, with the Revolution all but won, the most dangerous enemy of the United States was its own army. Unpaid for years, cheated of their promised pensions, the officers camped at New...
11 Aug 35min
A Failed Nation - A Rope of Sand
On December 23rd, 1783, in the Senate chamber at Annapolis, George Washington did the thing conquerors never do: he laid his commission at the feet of the Congress and went home to be a farmer — an ac...
8 Aug 38min
Interlude
If you've listening to this, you been with this show a while, scroll back to the beginning of the feed. Everything down there is new. Every episode from the start of this show has been remade. Season ...
4 Aug 1min
Independence - It Is All Over
Yorktown did not end the American Revolution. It ended the will to fight it — and that will broke not in Virginia but in London, and then in a rented room in Paris. This is the story of how the war wa...
5 Jul 202539min
